This sermon was preached at Glenwood & Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa, on March 11, 2018. It’s based on John 3:14-21, Psalm 107, and Numbers 21:4-9. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson/.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
John 3:16 may be the most well known Bible verse of all time, the gospel in a nut shell. It declares the salvation God gives to the world through Jesus, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate exactly what that salvation looks like. Nor does it clarify exactly from what it is that this world needs to be saved.
Is the answer as simple as sin? Evil deeds? Disbelief?
Could it be argued that God saves us from fear? From brokenness? From despair?
Our gospel reading for this day is paired with a Hebrew Bible story, an Old Testament story, that definitely points to salvation as rescue from sin and death. But it’s also partnered with Psalm 107, in which the psalmist offers up a variety of situations in which we need God…AND a multitude of ways in which God’s steadfast love redeems us, saves us.
The appointed verses from the Psalm for this day fit well with the Old Testament reading and with the notion of needing to be saved from our sin.
Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities endured affliction; they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death (Psalm 107:17-18).
Elsewhere in the psalm, though, the human condition is one of being lost and growing faint of spirit.
Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them (Psalm 107: 4-5).
Indeed, each section of the psalm paints a different portrait of the situation from which God’s love comes to rescue us.
Imprisonment and unceasing labor.
Faltering courage in the storms of life.
Being diminished and brought low by oppression, trouble, and sorrow.
If you were writing a psalm today, what situations would you add? What in your life, what in the life of the world, needs God’s intervention?
In each situation the psalmist portrays, the conclusion is the same: then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and the Lord saved them from their distress. God is responsive to our pleading. God hears our cries.
Nothing is beyond the reach of God’s redemption. There is no evil that God can’t use for good. There is no storm that God can’t see you safely through. In the imagery of the Old Testament reading, there is no snake bite from which you can’t be healed.
But here’s the thing, and I don’t like it one bit. The snakes remain. The storms keep coming. Evil is ever-present. We know this. We experience this every day. What is perhaps harder at times to know, to see, harder to pay attention to, is God at work for our salvation in the midst of it all. We experience that salvation when we look up. We live as we look at Jesus.
On the cross, lifted high, Jesus took on our sin. He endured our every storm. He experienced our fear and our sorrow.
And when God raised him from the dead, when that tomb stood empty, robbed of its power, robbed of its claim on Jesus and ALL those he came to save, then even death was redeemed.
So that those situations in which we are most in need of God’s intervention are the very same situations where we most powerfully experience God’s steadfast love.
Where there is sin, God brings forgiveness.
Where there is systemic evil, God brings change.
Where there is fear, God brings courage.
Where there is despair, God brings hope.
Where there is brokenness, God brings wholeness.
Where we are lost, God is our way.
Where we are imprisoned, God is our freedom.
Where we are brought low, God is our resurrection.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Sarah Bessey* wrote a prayer for International Women’s Day this past week. I’d like to share just a portion with you as a blessing for you today:
I pray that the places where this world has broken you, where evil has left its mark, where you have felt abandoned and broken and hurt, where you are in pain…would become a wellspring of healing and wholeness for you. I pray for the desert to bloom with flowers. I pray for the dry parched earth to be filled with cleansing rain and healing waters. I pray for your healing, and I pray for your wholeness. I pray for your boldness; I pray for your voice to rise. May you witness a new thing brewing. And may your very place of death become a story of unexpected resurrection.
The psalmist ends with a command: Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord (Psalm 107: 43). Look up, beloved. Look up and see God’s love for you. Look up and live. Amen.
*http://sarahbessey.com/a-prayer-for-international-womens-day/